Jury Finds Rabbi Guilty In Murder Plot

By ROBERT HANLEY

Published: November 21, 2002

FREEHOLD, N.J., Nov. 20—
A prominent South Jersey rabbi was found guilty today of hiring a friend to murder his wife in 1994, a crime that could bring him the death penalty.

A year and one week after the first trial of the rabbi, Fred J. Neulander, ended with a hung jury in Camden, a panel of seven men and five women here convicted him of all three charges against him. The jury issued its verdict after four days of deliberations.

The jury will return Thursday for the trial's penalty hearing, and afterward will sentence the rabbi to death or life imprisonment for plotting the murder of his wife, Carol, who was found bludgeoned to death at their Cherry Hill home on Nov. 1, 1994. Prosecutors contended that the rabbi, a founder of a large reform synagogue, wanted his wife of 29 years dead so he could pursue a secret two-year romance with a Philadelphia radio personality, Elaine Soncini.

As the jury forewoman announced the verdict about 3:45 this afternoon, Rabbi Neulander, 61, stood quietly in a business suit at the defense table and clenched his fingers together but otherwise maintained the placid demeanor he has shown since the trial started on Oct. 21.

Two women on the jury held hands and one seemed near tears as all 12 members were polled on their decision. After the jurors were excused, Carol Neulander's brothers, Edward and Robert Lidz, and her sister, Margaret Miele, exchanged tearful hugs and handshakes with each other and their spouses and the detectives who have worked on the case for nearly a decade.

The charge that exposes Rabbi Neulander to possible execution is murder-for-hire. The state contended that he plotted the murder with Leonard Jenoff, a financially strapped recovering alcoholic whom the rabbi befriended in 1993 and used as a private detective after Mrs. Neulander's death. Mr. Jenoff said the rabbi promised him $30,000, and paid about $18,000.

The second count charged the rabbi as an accomplice to a murder that occurred during the theft of Mrs. Neulander's purse by Mr. Jenoff and his roommate, Paul Daniels, a schizophrenic drug addict who admitted that he helped in the slaying. Both Mr. Jenoff and Mr. Daniels have pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter and await sentencing. The third charge was conspiracy.

The prosecutor, James P. Lynch, said he was ''very pleased'' with the verdict, but he and Mrs. Neulander's family said little else because of the pending penalty hearing. (Although New Jersey reinstated the death penalty in 1982, the state has not executed anyone since 1963.)

Rabbi Neulander's lawyer, Michael E. Riley, said the rabbi would take the witness stand and ask the jurors to spare his life.

Mr. Riley said the rabbi was ''obviously disappointed'' with the verdict. ''He's a very courageous, strong man, and he's going to talk to the jury directly tomorrow, without questions,'' Mr. Riley said.

Mr. Riley said he planned to appeal the verdict, but he declined to cite his legal grounds.

Although Rabbi Neulander testified on his own behalf at his first trial last fall, he decided not to during the second trial because, Mr. Riley said, the defense team wanted jurors to focus exclusively on its attack against Mr. Jenoff's credibility.

Prosecutors had no murder weapon, fingerprints, blood analysis or other physical evidence to help prove Mr. Jenoff's story that the rabbi had hired him. So this trial, like the first, became a verbal duel between prosecution and defense to build a negative image of each man for the jury.

Mr. Lynch portrayed the rabbi as an icy philanderer who arranged the murder so he could pursue his love affair with Ms. Soncini. Mr. Lynch said the rabbi showed little or no outward emotion or grief after finding his wife's body or during the week of mourning after her death.

Members of his synagogue, Congregation M'Kor Shalom in Cherry Hill, described Rabbi Neulander as an intelligent and compelling preacher and a compassionate spiritual leader. But, Mr. Lynch showed, they knew nothing of his secret adultery with Ms. Soncini.

In the defense's closing arguments, Mr. Riley acknowledged the adultery but said that did not translate into murder. As for the rabbi's demeanor, Mr. Riley described Rabbi Neulander as a private person who always kept his expression of emotions under control.

Mr. Riley argued that the prosecutor had no proof the rabbi had been involved in a murder plot. He dismissed Mr. Jenoff as ''a delusional serial liar'' who concocted the story about a plot as an act of revenge after the rabbi's lawyers fired him as his private investigator in 1999.

In the five years before his dismissal, Mr. Jenoff met at times with Camden County detectives and offered theories about the murderer. Suddenly, in May 2000, he confessed to the crime and implicated the rabbi. Mr. Jenoff testified that he confessed because of grief and remorse.

Two convicts who met him in jail immediately after the confession testified that Mr. Jenoff told them he alone had committed the murder, without the rabbi's knowledge.

In his closing arguments, Mr. Lynch pointed to two pieces of Jenoff trial testimony to support the prosecution's conspiracy charge. Mr. Jenoff said that early in their plot, he and the rabbi talked about killing Mrs. Neulander, during one of her regular trips to North Jersey or to Camden. Mr. Lynch argued that only the rabbi could have provided Mr. Jenoff with those travel details.

Mr. Lynch also cited two telephone conversations Mrs. Neulander had had with her daughter, Rebecca Neulander Rockoff. In the first, a few days before the murder, Mrs. Neulander told her daughter that a strange man had appeared as they talked, bearing a letter for the rabbi. The daughter testified that her mother told her the rabbi had called earlier that day and told his wife to expect a messenger.

During the second phone conversation, Mrs. Neulander told her daughter that the same man had just appeared at the front door. Minutes later, Mrs. Neulander was bludgeoned to death.

Mr. Jenoff testified that he was the man Mrs. Neulander had described in both calls.